Most tickets other than Advance tickets allow the ticket holder to break a journey and then carry on later.

Because I am a coeliac and need gluten-free food, if I’m travelling a long distance, I may break the journey in say Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds or Manchester, where I know I can get a quality gluten-free meal.

Tourists might want to break a journey between Edinburgh and London at York or Durham. This is possible on an Off Peak or Anytime ticket.

Tickets To Or From Stations Or Terminals

This ticket is a First Class Off Peak ticket between Manchester Stations and London Terminals, using Any Permitted Route.

I actually used it between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston stations, but I could have used the ticket to go via Birmingham and then take Chiltern Railways from Birmingham to London Marylebone.

I think the general rule is if your ticket is marked Any Permitted Route and you keep going in the same direction, most routes are possible.

I always ask first, as some companies have different rules.

Visiting Bicester Village, Oxford And Windsor In One Day

The Hong Kong family I met were visiting Oxford and Bicester Village.

The best way to do this is to make sure you have a Day Return ticket between London Terminals and Oxford, which is marked Any Permissible Route.

This will enable you to do the following three journeys.

London Paddington to Oxford.

Oxford to Bicester Village

Bicester Village to London Marylebone.

With a Railcard, this ticket will cost £18.10.

If you want to visit Windsor, this can be done on the outward journey, by splitting the trip at Slough. There is a branch line to Windsor at Slough worked by a shuttle train, which costs £1.90 for a return trip with a Railcard.

Ranger And Rover Tickets

Check these tickets out, if you’re staying in a town or city for a few days, as they may be a cheaper option.

I do a bit of research for a Californian lawyer, who helps small and medium-sized high-tech and other ventures setup in the UK.

He likes my opinion on the plans of start-ups and established businesses with respect to their location in the UK.

A couple of days ago, I received this e-mail.

John and his friends are funding a new venture being setup in Oxford.

The proposed CEO is a recently-widowed sixty-one year-old Canadian, who will be moving to London, where her daughter and family currently live.

Can you tell me, what it would be like commuting out from London to Oxford perhaps three days a week?

I should also say that at the moment, she is in need of having hip replacement surgery and proposes to have that in London, where she will be near to her family, during her stay.

She wouldn’t be able to walk a long distance.

This was my reply.

I can’t see much of a problem, as knowing John, the business could probably afford a few taxis and Crossrail will hopefully start running within the next eighteen months, making the London end straightforward.

Today, I went to Oxford leaving on the 09:50 train from Paddington and returning on the 13:01. Partly, to see if there were any pitfalls in the plan and also to have coffee and a snack with an old friend in the City, who helped me very much with the algorithms for Artemis.

These are my thoughts on the journey.

Trains

I travelled out in a comfortable nine-car Class 802 train. I’m not sure, whether it was the same on return or a shorter five-car train.

The outward journey was busier than the return journey, as I suspect that quite a few people live in London and work in Reading or Oxford.

But I did get a table both ways, so I was able to lay my copy of The Times flat and read it properly.

Cost

Off Peak Day Return tickets with a Senior Railcard, are £18.30 in Standard Class and £49.25 in First Class.

As I have a Freedom Pass, I bought a Standard Class Off Peak Day Return between the Zone 6 boundary and Oxford for just £13.05 with my Senior Railcard.

I consider my ticket to be good value for a pensioner’s day out!

Journey Times And Frequency

Both trains took about an hour.

There are also two fast trains per hour, many of which are nine-car trains, with the remainder being five-car trains.

,Coffee, Tea And Snacks

I was surprised to see a trolley on the train.

But I don’t think much business was being done.

Oxford Station And Oxford City Centre

There were plenty of taxis at Oxford station, but I walked the distance both ways in under twenty minutes.

A friend, who has had an NHS double hip replacement, reckons she could walk it easily.

The biggest problem would appear to be the traffic and the narrow pavements

Note, that there are a few maps and some decent cafes and restaurants.

Conclusion

Travelling from London to Oxford is a very feasible daily commute and there are many worse ways of spending an hour on a train.

Community-owned rail operator Go-op Co-operative Ltd is seeking views on proposed new open access rail services in Somerset and Wiltshire. Services, which it hopes could start in summer 2020, would be operated by two refurbished Class 769 units working ‘a complex series of trips between Oxfordshire and Somerset’

The first bridge has been installed over the railway at a Site of Special Scientific Interest In Oxford.

I feel that Arup have designed this bridge system for purposes other than permanent structures.

This Google Map shows the centre of Tadcaster.

The road bridge that connects the two parts of the town was swept away by floodwater, as this BBC report, which details the destruction and rebuilding shows.

The new system couldn’t replace a road bridge, but there must be many instances around the world, after a an earthquake or floods, where the first thing that the rescuers need is a bridge to access a destroyed town or village.

The size and low weight of this bridge system, means it could be an early arrival.

The Commission’s central finding is that a lack of sufficient and suitable housing presents a fundamental risk to the success of this area. Without a joined-up plan for housing, jobs and infrastructure across the corridor, it will be left behind its international competitors. By providing the foundations for such a strategy, new east-west transport links present a once in a generation opportunity to secure the area’s future success.

As housing is so important to any development, this is crucial. The interim report makes a series of recommendations. This is the first.

Government should go ahead with East West Rail’s initial phase, a new link cutting journey times by more than half on the route from Oxford to Bedford and Milton Keynes, ensuring it is delivered before 2024; and it should invest in developing as soon as possible detailed plans for both the next phase of East West Rail (which would complete the link to Cambridge) and for a new Oxford-Cambridge Expressway.

So why is the Government farting about?

I blame the following.

The route via Bedford, contains lots of great-crested newts, in all the disused brick works.

The name; East West Rail Link, doesn’t have North in it.

Oxford doesn’t want a railway, that might encourage more visitors who would interfere with academic life.

The Sir Humphries of this world went to one of two universities; Oxford or Cambridge. They believe the two academic cities shouldn’t be connected and certainly not via Milton Keynes.

Addenbrooke’s hospital has objected, as it will bring lots of patients from the route to their world-class facilities.

It doesn’t go near Islington for the Labour Party or Edinburgh for the SNP.

Democracy

The Chinese would have built it last week or possibly yesterday, as it calls at Bicester Village!

Line improvements to reduce journey times between Marylebone and Oxford.

Improvements to allow the longest possible locomotive-hauled sets to run the route.

Development of West Hampstead Interchange.

Creation of a second terminus at Old Oak Common.

One or both of the last two options will have to be implemented, due to the lack of capacity at Marylebone and that station’s bad connectivity.

But what would I do?

The Southern end of the Chiltern Main Line needs better connectivity and the best way to do this would be to link it to Crossrail.

When Crossrail opens to Paddington in December 2018, the direct link I wrote about in Paddington Is Operational Again, will enable passengers taking the Bakerloo Line from Marylebone to change easily to Crossrail.

Together with line improvements and longer trains, this should handle the traffic for a few years.

It is interesting to look at a few journey times.

Chiltern has trains scheduled between Marylebone and High Wycombe in around 24-28 minutes.

Crossrail services from Paddington will take 27 minutes to Sloughbold step of creating a Crossrail .

Crossrail services from Paddington will take 45 minutes to Reading.

I would take the bold step of creating a Crossrail branch to High Wycombe.

High Wycombe would receive 4 tph from Crossrail.

There could be cross-platform interchange between Crossrail and Chiltern services to Oxford and Birmingham.

The Acton-Northolt Line would be double-tracked and electrified to connect Crossrail at Old Oak Common to the Chiltern Main Line at Northolt Junction.

The Chiltern Main line would be electrified from Northolt Junction to High Wycombe.

Network Rail must rue the day they agreed to extend the Chiltern Line to Oxford, as the locals have done everything they can to tell Network Rail, that they don’t want the new railway. I wrote about it in July 2015, in Network Rail’s Problems In Oxford.

I know something about noise and vibration and feel very strongly that we should do what we can to minimise noise, where it causes problems.

Noise from a railway comes from several sources.

The track

Diesel locomotives and multiple units.

Pantographs on electric locomotives and multiple units.

Freight wagons.

All contribute to a various degree.

In my view, the worst noise comes from diesel locomotives like the noisy and smelly Class 66 locomotives and there is not much point on spending millions on silent track and then allowing these to run through sensitive areas.

The sooner lines like this one through North Oxford are electrified the better.

This report is crucial to a lot of reconstruction work continuing on railways in parts of the UK.

I’ve put the link, so I can find the report easily.

Here’s a taster of what the report contains.

This extract is entitled Case study – Aristotle Lane, Oxford and talks about the problems of closing a private level crossing in Oxford.

Network Rail planned to install a replacement footbridge over the Oxford to Banbury Line north of Oxford Station and close an adjacent private level crossing for safety reasons. People walking from a nearby car park, across some allotments to the other side of the tracks, used the level crossing. The new bridge will have a link to the allotments removing the need for people to cross the tracks.

The level crossing is not a public right of way and the rights to use it are owned by Oxford City Council. As part of the East West Rail (phase 1) improvement scheme, Chiltern Railways made an application in 2009 to close the level crossing as part of a wider project to upgrade the railway line.

Objections from allotment holders at the Public Inquiry meant that the approval was not granted. This meant that Network Rail needed to pursue a separate planning application in order to complete the work and deliver Marylebone to Oxford services.

Efforts to close the crossing and deliver the scheme continued. Meetings were held in 2012 between Network Rail, ORR and the Council to find a solution. Finally, in 2014 the principle to close this one level crossing was granted, but with the conditions that Network Rail had to fund and construct better access to the allotments, arrange a land swap so the local school could be expanded and to fund and build a new car park. All of these require further, and separate, planning permissions.

A planning application was submitted in May 2014 and approved a year later after three separate planning committee presentations. Construction of the bridge is now planned to start in January 2016 with completion in September 2016. The level crossing will then be closed seven years after the first application.

Kafka is certainly alive and well and living in Oxford.

For more information on this fiasco/farce/cock-up/vexacious litigation/waste of money (delete as appropriate!) read this article in the Oxford Mail, entitled Network Rail changes its plan for new Aristotle Lane bridge after protests.

Some of the comments are priceless.

I am very much of the opinion that all level crossings should be shut on safety grounds. If there are serious objections, then surely the railway should be closed until an agreed solution is negotiated.

About This Blog

What this blog will eventually be about I do not know.

But it will be about how I’m coping with the loss of my wife and son to cancer in recent years and how I manage with being a coeliac and recovering from a stroke. It will be about travel, sport, engineering, food, art, computers, large projects and London, that are some of the passions that fill my life.

And hopefully, it will get rid of the lonely times, from which I still suffer.